


strawberry swing

by jaembinn



Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, choi yeonjun has anterograde amnesia, confused yeonjun, i love coldplay so much that's why i used this title, i miss choi jinri so much, inspired by christopher nolan's memento, mentioned minor character death, pink hair soobin, somewhat plot twist, this is basically just a draft, this song has a special place in my heart, unanswered plothole, you're gonna have so many questions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:42:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23797858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaembinn/pseuds/jaembinn
Summary: Two broken boys sitting on a swing while eating strawberries.
Relationships: Choi Soobin/Choi Yeonjun
Comments: 5
Kudos: 37





	strawberry swing

It stops, the bus stops. And he doesn’t know why he’s here.

He feels a soft pat on the back of his shoulder and not long after that, a faint smile greets his line of sight. It’s a woman, perhaps a few years older than him, really pretty, and Yeonjun can’t help but to give her back a smile even though she might be a regular stranger (that he strangely feels fond of). The bus isn’t full, but it’s cold and he keeps on eyeing the passing trees and electric poles through the big windows. The morning sun waves back at Yeonjun with noticeably happy smiles, it’s bright, the clouds aren’t clumped to each other but he bets if he walks out of the bus, the weather would burn the hell out of him.

“Look at your polaroid films, Jjunie-yah.”

_Polaroids?_

The item sounds so familiar. Not because he doesn’t know what polaroids are, of course, but there’s a tint of something so important about it, which also explains why his heart doesn’t skip a beat when he heard his name being called by a _stranger_ and to why his hands start to unconsciously unzip one of the bag’s pockets. Polaroid. Polaroid films..?

“I hope this wouldn’t be the third time you’re gonna call me pretty, you sweet pea,” there’s a small laugh escaping from the woman sitting beside him, and Yeonjun swears he could feel warmth running around his ears and neck. His hands search around the captured films, all of them seem so familiar to him but he’s too confused to think what’s going on, to which she quickly helps him out by pointing two films out of all pieces, and that’s where everything starts to fit the puzzle.

(A click, a sudden bright light in the bus, and a real pout. Yeonjun laughs, his cousin really doesn’t want to be in the picture before getting herself prepared for a cute candid. The film slides out from his polaroid and he takes it out, not bothering himself to shake it and he takes his marker back again. With a shaky signature writing, he writes a few things on the white bottom of the film, “Choi Jinri, cousin. On your way to Grandpa’s.”)

(The other film is a secret, he’s not really proud of it. He took it a few weeks ago.)

“Oh, oh my god,” Yeonjun cringes, he ducks his head to the films and just tries his best not to show his face to the woman, “noona, I’m so sorry-”

The bus starts to move again, as well as Jinri’s occasional sweet laughter, “hey, come on. Are you saying that you wanna take the compliment back? I was actually so happy that my little cousin called me pretty.”

“Yeah, but-!” He can feel a few people in the bus giving him and his cousin weird looks, he cringes again, his voice lowers down to the smallest volume only both of them can hear, “but I could’ve flirted with you and I wouldn’t know!”

The bus stops once again. Jinri stands up, unable to joke around or answer unimportant things and that’s the moment where he can sit still only for five or six seconds. The scenery outside the bus is incredible, he admits. He can see small bumps of mountains through the window, and he jolts when the automatic door slides open. The bus driver mutters something in a certain accent he can’t really make out, but the excitement ambushes his heart just when he realized that he could hear the word of a town name, perhaps his grandfather’s hometown. Or Jinri’s, he doesn’t know. He’ll have to ask later.

The teacup falls from his grasp, and it breaks on the wooden tiles. Just when it shatters so loudly, his heart does the same.

“Yeonjun-ah, what’s wrong?”

His heart bursts in a great deal of volume, shaky breaths accompany the whole unfamiliar living room and his chest hurts seeing a stranger, specifically an old man with deep wrinkles and white hairs this time, standing by one of the opened doors. He gulps, he doesn’t know why this room feels so familiar and yet unfamiliar to him, even his feet agree so. Yeonjun backs away for a bit, only to step on the little wet shards of glass on the floor.

“Ah-” Yeonjun feels a quick and small bite on his right foot, he also can hear quick footsteps surrounding him as he avoids the shards once again. The old man mutters a few words, perhaps saying that Yeonjun should’ve been more careful around broken glasses or cups while holding a broom on his hand, sweeping away the broken shards. The boy squints, his instinct kicks in to take a certain something from his pocket and so he did that. With a bleeding foot, he searches around the polaroid films and finally solves the fact that this man, Choi Kyungwoon, is his grandfather.

“Harabeoji-”

“No, stay there,” states Kyungwoon, “Jinri-yah! Help this clumsy boy out. Aish, you clumsy kid..”

_Jinri, Jinri.._

One by one, he finds a familiar film once again, a vague picture of a pretty woman not looking straight to the camera, and one of the doors creak open not long after he finds out that this Jinri is his older cousin. She then starts to nag at him, eyes turning wide when she notices small streaks of blood on the floor and on Yeonjun’s feet, “oh, you silly kid!”

Yeonjun wants to laugh at how they keep calling him silly or stupid and anywhere around those. His cousin and grandpa are busy, Jinri walks fast to find bandages and Kyungwoon is still sweeping the shards to the dustpan. But he holds them down, they all seem so serious and Yeonjun can’t lie at how happy he feels like this. Being cared for. But he hopes that before he has this disorder, these people have always been caring for him too. And perhaps he was caring too? It’d be great to be a caring person, he admits.

“Hey hey hey, don’t zone out, sweet pea. Sit down right there,” and so he tries to do so, “wait- wait, no! Don’t- oh god, don’t let your foot step on the flo- Yeonjun!”

Kyungwoon laughs, it’s one of those squeaky wheezing laughter and Yeonjun ends up following the same, mouth still dry but he finds entertainment at both Jinri’s frustrated expressions and Kyungwoon’s laugh. (It’s funny. He admits his grandpa’s laughter is contagious).

“What are you guys laughin’ at?” Jinri holds a serious expression this time, to which Kyungwoon quickly stops himself and tries to whistle instead, he brings the dustpan outside and Yeonjun feels like a weight has been lifted off of his chest. This family is something. “Come on, Jjunie, sit down.”

He limps towards one of the nearest dining chairs without trying to land his right foot and Jinri sighs, she starts to nag again but this time, Yeonjun can’t hear much. Jinri then takes care of his small wounds while he’s on his seat, gentle and professional hands are right on the bottom of his foot and Yeonjun wants to conclude something. Maybe she’s a doctor around here?

“Yeonjun,” he looks around to the source of the strained voice, finding Kyungwoon now about to sit on one of the old couches near them, “you never call me harabeoji since you were a kid.”

“Really?” he’s a bit surprised at this, “what do I call you, then?”

Before Kyungwoon can answer, Jinri puts a bandage around Yeonjun’s foot, words slurring to answer first, “you always call him habeoji, sweet pea. You like to shorten names, things, cities, food. Remember?”

His mind wanders further again. Jinri’s voice sounds so soft, so manipulatingly soft, as if she wants to give a candy to a kid. The films on his hand all look like his memory lane, every each one of them is important, even if there is one film that he doesn’t like to remember or mention out to people. They’re all familiar, and they help, it’s what Yeonjun feels grateful for. And yet, he’s stupid. There’s only ten films in total, he has only summed it up now, fingers counting on the films like they’re poker cards, _ten_. This isn’t a memory lane, this is nothing like it. What kind of human would they be if they only have _ten_ memories in total?

“I.. don’t,” he mumbles, still looking at the films one by one, “I’m sorry I forgot about it.”

“Jinri-yah, I told you not to pressure the kid like this,” Kyungwoon cuts in, “he’s had enough.”

“And they gave me sweet potatoes! Habeoji’s sweet potatoes are good, I think I want more.”

_“Oh, it’s that good, hm?”_

“..yeah.”

Yeonjun’s gaze goes distant to the dark garden, and then a frown is visible, he puts the phone away from his ear for a good five seconds only to press it near his ear back again. He’s sitting on a swing near the garden, the nighttime is furiously cold, and he can feel his own nerves going for the same condition too.

“Wait, who is this?” his hand scrambles around his pockets while the other one is holding the phone, and when he’s finally found them, Yeonjun quickly spreads the films on his lap, “..who is this?”

There’s silence for awhile. Through the thousand possibilities of who this could be, he hopes that the one on the phone is someone he knows, someone that he’s taken a picture of and is in one of the films. He waits, hopeful for the name that would come out next.

A name is mentioned, and Yeonjun’s heart stops.

Unable to think and breathe clearly, he hangs up the phone. His breathings are unsteady, feet limping towards his grandfather’s house only to take the polaroid with him and captures the phone to one of the films. Eleven films now. Bad memory. He writes the number on the bottom of the film, and another sentence that says, “DON’T ANSWER THE PHONE.”

And with that, he forgets what happened next. He likes to call this, a skill, a power he has that he’s not really proud of but tries his best to think that this is nothing to be ashamed of. ‘Teleportation’, he calls this. One minute after the polaroid film that he took, Yeonjun finds himself waking up on an unfamiliar place once again.

How long has it been? Hours? Days? Weeks?

The sky is hazy, cluttered with crimson and amber-tinted and seemingly stretched to infinity. Well, any flat-earth oriented person would’ve disagreed with that, but Yeonjun can see how the hot pink afternoon sky keeps running for eternity to the front in a big circular scale, right in his line of sight. The swing that he’s sitting on is damp, maybe it was raining, bucketing down a few hours ago.

Strawberries, he’s holding a strawberry. Two, actually. Two of them. A polaroid on his lap.

“Why aren’t you eating them?”

Yeonjun is baffled at the fact that he didn’t know there’s someone sitting right beside him. He doesn’t even know that there are two swings at his grandfather’s garden. Pink. That is the first thing he saw. He has pink hair, _pink?_ Pink, like the yon rich sky standing near them. Like, good memories. When his mother bakes him hallongrotta cookies, and he can smell the fresh raspberry jam in the air while he takes care of his dog at home. Does he have a dog? Yeonjun doesn’t know, but the pink reminds him of it, whether or not he has a dog or if his mother bakes him hallongrotta cookies back then, it feels like they’re true. It almost feels like he’s making new memories, memories that he hasn’t seen before but they’re considered to be one. Solid-state crystal memories.

“I- I’m sorry, who..”

The boy beside him smiles, eyes drowned in his own cheekbones, “that’s okay, Yeonjun hyung. You already told me your story.”

Dimples. He has dimples. And younger than him.

Yeonjun feels like the whole surroundings are spinning, and he takes a bite on one of the strawberries that he’s holding. Then he focuses, his brain focuses.

“I’m sorry,” Yeonjun mumbles, lips pink, “did you tell me your name before?”

“I lied, my name’s not Daniel,” the boy giggles, Yeonjun thought it’s an apologetic laugh, “i mean, it’s not like you’d remember.”

Yeonjun purses his lips at the words. He’s right, anyone could’ve lied to him at this point. He’s so easy to manipulate, being tossed around corners to corners, played like a human puppet with no state of mind. Like a pawn. Is this pink-haired fake Daniel boy playing with him?

“I’m Soobin, and you told me about your short-term memory loss thing,” he says, finishing one strawberry already. Or two? Three? More than that? Yeonjun hasn’t figured it out, they might’ve been sitting there for hours while eating dozens of those.

“Anterograde,” Yeonjun’s foot slightly pushes the ground, making his swing move only a few inches, “anterograde amnesia.”

“Sounds smart, I could never.”

Yeonjun frowns, “could what?”

“Could never remember that term.”

At that, Yeonjun is taken aback. He gives a rather accusatory glare back at Soobin, and his expressions soften for a second seeing how Soobin’s dimples adorably move around munching the strawberry, but Yeonjun shakes this thought away, “what’s that supposed to mean?”

Soobin laughs. A pink laughter this time. It’s light, like how the breezy wind flaps the end of their hairs, mackerel clouds leisurely bumping into each other, or skipping classes with your crush without thinking what the consequences would be, or perhaps as light as Soobin’s pink hair itself. It’s light, and Yeonjun hates how he likes to hear more.

“I’m sorry,” Soobin does a mini bow, his deep voice is accompanied with hushed chuckles, “I’m sorry, I must’ve offended you, hyung.”

“I don’t know why you’d find that funny.”

“God, I’m sorry, it’s just-” Yeonjun notices Soobin biting his own thin lip, both of their stomachs churn, “-you were laughing along with me about that, maybe like.. ten minutes ago, hyung.”

Yeonjun can feel his guard lowering down so low, to the mosh pit of his own thoughts. Soobin looks harmless, there’s really nothing about him that should make Yeonjun vulnerable in a bad way, and so there’s a creak of a smile, appearing on Yeonjun’s lips, “I did?”

The pink-haired boy nods, a glint of excitement flashes on his own eyes, “you don’t know how much you kept giving me these dark jokes about yourself. Trust me, I did- I did try not to laugh along with you because, well.. I was concerned, but then you kinda like, gave me more strawberries and said stuff like, heeeeey, loosen up, Soobin-ah. Stuff like th- Hey!”

Yeonjun and his own hushed chuckles start to take the sliding film out of his polaroid. It’s still black, so he shakes it, shakes it more (no matter how Soobin keeps trying to take the film away from him), and shakes it once again. The film is still pitch black.

“That’s what you get for taking pictures of people without consent,” Soobin huffs, there’s a small pout forming on his lips and Yeonjun finds it annoyingly adorable how he’s still munching on his strawberry, “old hag.”

A loud laugh escapes Yeonjun’s mouth just as he heard those exact two words, also relieved noticing how the film start to show vague colors and the actual picture that he took.

_Weird. Why did I take a picture of the garden instead?_

“Everyone forgets, Soobin. Old hag or not, everyone forgets,” Yeonjun mumbles, taking the marker from his pocket to write something on the bottom of the film of the strawberry garden. With a shaky handwriting, he writes _Soobin_ , “I don’t even know how we got close but you’re nice, I suppose. That’s what matters, right?”

Yeonjun swears he could see a visible frown coming from the pink-haired boy, but it breaks into a smile so fast, as if trying to fraudulently agree and it irks Yeonjun a lot at that moment, “whatever floats your boat, hyung.”

Yeonjun really doesn’t know how he became friends with this boy, or what kind of relationship did they have before everything that happened. Or perhaps he’s a stranger, a new person knocking onto Yeonjun’s personal door gently. Or whether they’re enemies before, that possibility could happen too. Anything is possible, but Yeonjun doesn’t care. And when Soobin blabbers more about something that he can’t hear exactly, Soobin takes two more strawberries near them, giving one for each.

With a fruity and mildly acid taste leaving his tongue, Yeonjun opens the marker’s cap once again and writes on the back of the accidental film, _we were sitting on the strawberry swing._

The sky is hazy, cluttered with crimson, amber-tinted and seemingly stretched to infinity, with smudges of pink hair every time he closes his eyes. This doesn’t seem so bad after all.

Putting the polaroid films back to his pocket, Yeonjun breaks the silence, “noona.”

“Hm?”

“Why am I here?”

The terrace goes cold, just as cold as the upheaval lasting season outside. The daylight is still out, the wind smells like crisp, curtains flap around graciously and Kyungwoon who heard this too while reading his newspapers goes silent, it’s like none of them are prepared for this question and will never be. Jinri stops in her tracks, her professional gentle hands leaving the propagated plant and there’s that again, the soft smile giving candies for kids, “Yeonjun-”

“No, tell me.”

Not long after that, the smile falls down from Jinri’s lips like a waterfall, “tell me.”

“Yeonjun-ah,” tense, the said boy glances back at his grandfather, “we’ll talk about this when you’re ready.”

“Ready for what?” he asks, “tell me, habeoji. Ready for what?”

No one answers.

“Where’s my mom?”

Everyone can hear sniffles coming from the only woman in the house, and yet no one answers once again.

“WHERE THE HELL IS MY MOTHER?!”

“She died,” Kyungwoon’s voice is strained, almost as if he’s not planning to tell him this for the rest of his life, all throats tightened, “a week after your memory loss.”

There’s a tug on his chest, and a metal rope on his neck. With blurred eyes, a small sob comes out of Jinri’s lips, and she runs to her cousin, giving him the best embrace that she could. He’s taller now, she knows that already, but to Jinri, Yeonjun is still that same old noisy four year old that wouldn’t cry even after falling down from a bike. Kyungwoon remembers the same thing, too. But his tired features are too stiff to move, and so he stays there with a tear slipping from his eye.

Everyone breaks down when Yeonjun cries on Jinri’s shoulder, saying that he remembers how his mother’s cookies taste like.

There’s a strawberry on his palm again.

His feet don’t dangle, they touch the dirt underneath the swing and Yeonjun realizes it’s dark. The clouds are blushed like a ripe mango, and he has only a few seconds to decide whether it’s the sunset, or the sunrise. He glances back at the pink smudges on the edge of his peripheral vision, and sees Soobin picking more strawberries into a small wooden bowl.

“It’s sunrise,” Soobin mumbles, loud enough for both of them to hear, “we’ve been hanging around here for hours now.”

“It’s weird how I remember your name specifically,” it’s true, Yeonjun thinks it was weird. He doesn’t even check his own polaroid films. “Did you hypnotize me before I teleported here?”

“Before you what?”

Yeonjun sighs, annoyed, “before I teleported here.”

“Oh, hyung,” Soobin stifles down a laugh, “you’re human. Not Doctor Strange.”

Yeonjun goes silent. Where, what’s this town’s name again? For all he can remember and see, he’s in a darn village. A clustered human settlement, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town. Not too close to Seoul but is still in the same island, he’s grateful for that. But far enough from any metropolitan cities and their good signals. He doesn’t know nor remember much, but he’s sure the signals here wack. Or is Marvel doing so well that even the people from small villages can watch these things in the middle of a busy day where they typically prefer to work than waste time?

“Tell me,” Yeonjun eyes the pink-haired one, who’s now trying to sit on the other swing, “what did we talk about before I can remember this moment? You said we’ve been here for hours now.”

Then there’s a pink tint on both Soobin’s cheeks. Pink, like his hair and that confuses the hell out of Yeonjun.

“You told me about your mother,” Soobin takes a bite of his strawberry, to which Yeonjun frowns not knowing why he talked about his mother, “and your bruises.”

“Bruises?”

“Yeah, bruises,” both of them stare at each other for quite awhile, “you don’t remember that one?”

“No..?” Yeonjun is unsure. He’s quick, hands checking on the rest of his possible body parts where they can get bruised, and then hisses when he feel a painful tug on his wrist and thigh, “jeez, what the fuck happened here-”

“I don’t know either, hyung, but I was worried sick,” Soobin has a slight grimace on his expressions when he takes a glance on Yeonjun pulling the sleeve up, a reddish green blotch circling his wrist, “you cried for a bit.”

“I didn’t fall off of my bed, did I?”

Before Soobin can answer, Yeonjun hears a car door getting opened. Just right behind the garden. He doesn’t remember any engine noises here, but there’s that noise and someone’s coming.

“Jjunie?”

Perplexed, Yeonjun turns his back to see a woman by the patio doorstep, soft smile sticked on her lips, “Jjunie, your dad’s here.”

For what reason, he doesn’t know. His father’s here, which means he can’t hang out with Soobin for awhile. But his stomach churns when he looks back to the swing beside him, not finding a single pink-haired boy with strawberries on sight.

**Author's Note:**

> IM SORRY this is a really really weird drabble


End file.
